Down Under

We arrived in Perth with Beeds 15kg lighter than when we left the UK and me having ate my first Burger King in at least a decade at Kuala Lumpa airport. Clearly I have been spending too much time with Beedie.

We stayed with Beed's brother and sister in law in Perth and enjoyed a relaxing two weeks. It was nice to unpack and stay in one place for a while. I'm not sure I should admit this, but after four and a half months of having everything done for us, it was great to do our own washing, clean up and of course Beeds loved getting stuck into the cooking. Our first trip to the supermarket, and the prospect of cooking on a BBQ, caused Beedie to nearly have a nose bleed. He took on the role as head chef in the house, cooking plenty of meat including 'roo balls' (kangaroo meat balls) and there was plenty of talks of his future restaurant empire, BDQs.

During our time in Perth we spent lots of time walking along the many beautiful beaches, visiting Rottness Island, catching up with Fraser's siblings, trying to guess the name and gender of our unborn nephew/niece and catching up with my uni friend Ana. I also found a good physio who spoke the same language and was reassured a bit that I probably don't have 'back cancer', 'back disease' or 'osteoporosis' as the doctors in Vietnam liked to tell me.

One of many Perth beaches...





Lancelin beach, an hour north of Perth






Rottness Island


It is law to wear helmets in Australia, but the sun is so strong we had to spice up our already cool helmets with caps.






We saw snake...the darker the more poisoness apparently!


With Ana we travelled two hours north of Perth to Cervantes for a spot of camping. To keep in with Ana's tradition of it raining every time she camps, it absolutely poured! The weather has actually been a lot cooler than we expected, but still beautiful and a nice change after the humidity of Asia. We no longer pour with sweat upon stepping outside! En route to Cervantes we visited the Pinnacles, large rock formations in the dunes. Being the mature adults we are we immediately looked out for ones of certain shapes...





Can you spot Ana and me?!



We spent our last few days being treated by Fraser's siblings to a lovely weekend in the beautiful wine region of Margaret river. There we enjoyed some wine tasting and Fraser took pride in beating Scott at golf every time he played him. (5 times, ok ok, the number is going in - well done Beeds).


















I was delighted to also finally see an alive kangaroo as the other three I had spotted were all road kill. Apparently I also did quite well in managing to get a red back spider on me! Luckily Beeds noticed it and killed it before it bit me, otherwise I might have spent a few days in hospital.

After a great two weeks in Perth we said goodbye to the family and set off to Melbourne to visit Beed's friend Bob from school, and his lovely wife Holly and beautiful little Lola. Melbourne is a really cool city; very metropolitan, multi cultural and has a lot of character mixed in amongst the sky scrapers. We spent a few days sightseeing around the city, were treated to a lovely night at Holly's family beach house and some amazing hot springs, and of course Beeds and Bob spent a lot of time reminiscing about good old Merchi.













Note the spelling Beeds. Not Boggin!



Fraser and Bob cliff jumping!





Bob and Lola


One thing which we have definitely enjoyed about our time in Oz has been spotting the many Scottish names here! We have been to Blairgowrie, Dundas street, Princess Street etc etc and a wee visit to Arthur's Seat!







Tomorrow we head off to New Zealand! Bye for now...

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